Chapter 16
CHAPTER 16
Max
I suspect the dinner turned out the way it did because when I’d seen the huge flat rock the manager had shown me, I’d told him how I could imagine this as a great setting for a romantic picnic, or engagement shoot. I’d then mentioned that I was actually just briefed by a client, a major international jewelry brand, to find the perfect location for an advert for their latest range of very high-end engagement rings and that this might be an option I could present to them. Perhaps that’s why management had gone so overboard with the dinner set-up I was now faced with.
“What is this?” I turned to see Ash standing at the bottom of the boulder, looking up at me in horror. It was evening, but we were in the grip of a heatwave, and the external heat just contributed to the internal heat I felt looking at her.
“Dinner,” I said.
“I can see that, but why is it here? Why are there hundreds of candles and fairy lights in the trees, and champagne, and picnic blankets, on a giant boulder in the middle of one of the most beautiful places on earth?”
I shrugged. “I think they’re trying to show me the kinds of unique selling points this place has to offer.”
“It’s very . . .” Ash looked around nervously. I knew her facial expressions so well.
“Very what?” I pushed.
“Romantic,” she said with such disdain in her voice that it bordered on disgust.
“I guess it is rather romantic.”
“Oh, please, Logan, anyone can see this is romantic. You don’t even need to have your eyes open to know this is romantic. Just listen to the bloody music they’re playing in the background. Where is the speaker even? No one plays background music like this if they are not trying to set a romantic mood.”
“I suppose they have gone to great lengths setting this up for us,” I said, trying to downplay the romance of it all. I could see that the last thing on earth Ash wanted was to be sitting with me on a beautiful flat boulder under the African sky surrounded by candlelight.
“Someone has painstakingly twirled thousands of fairy lights through the branches of a giant thorn tree! Not to mention the fact that the candles are placed in a heart shape.”
“Are they? I hadn’t noticed,” I said innocently, still trying, once again, to downplay the very obvious romance of it all.
“Yes, they very much are!” She put her left hand on her hip and I tried to stop a smile. She still did that. She’d always done that when she was being angry or bossy. I’d watched her do that all through high school and she was still doing it thirteen years later. Some things clearly didn’t change.
“This is all too, too . . .” She waved her arm around and I could see her searching for the words. “Too much. I’ve had a long day, a fucking bizarre day and I’m exhausted and boiling hot and I can’t get cool and you cannot be standing there with heart-shaped petals and that many candles. I’m not having it.”
“Not having what?” I asked, feeling a little lost.
“We haven’t seen each other in thirteen years and now what? We’re supposed to sit here and enjoy what is clearly an overtly romantic dinner together after everything that happened between us? It’s so bizarre. God, this might actually be the most bizarre day of my life.”
“It is bizarre,” I echoed. “But I do have really good cheese.”
“Please don’t tell me you planned this whole thing?”
“No, I didn’t, but I did ask the lodge to get some cheese for us, as per our previous conversations. If you remember what we talked about . . .” I paused and watched her face carefully before I said the next thing. I wanted to gauge if there were going to be any . . . “ Possibilities .” The second the word left my mouth her entire face changed. She straightened up and when she spoke again, looked flustered.
“Well, there is now officially zero— zero— possibility of any possibilities. Ever.”
“So there were possibilities before?” I asked quickly.
“Before I knew it was you, maybe,” she said, shaking her head at me. “I still cannot believe you continued to flirt with me when you knew who I was and then had the audacity to still ask me on a, what did you call it, ‘semi-professional work date’?” She used air quotes on the word I do admit to using rather loosely. “You couldn’t have possibly been serious, Logan!”
I shrugged. “I mean . . . maybe .”
“ Maybe? Are you serious? After everything that happened between us and all the time that’s passed, you seriously thought I would have a semi-professional cheese date with you when I found out who you were?”
“I was hoping the cheese might win you over.
She shook her head aggressively now. “I don’t get it. Thirteen years ago you clearly wanted nothing to do with me to the point of disappearing. You disappeared off the face of the planet. And now you’ve suddenly reanimated out of thin air and you want a ‘ maybe ’?”
“Maybe I do.”
“Stop saying maybe! You don’t get to have ‘maybes’ or ‘possibilities,’ Log—” She stopped herself and ran her hand through her short hair.
“Max. Your name is Max. And that is so fucking weird too. It’s all weird.”
“I know. But we were getting on really well while emailing—you have to at least admit that.”
“If I’d known who you were, I would never have let that conversation go the way it did.”
“I think it went that way naturally,” I pointed out, and I nearly said, “ And I thought that meant something ,” but didn’t.
I watched her for a while before speaking again. The warm light from the candles and fairy lights illuminated her face. God, she was still so sexy. Her dark hair brought out the color of her eyes, accentuated her features, and drew my eyes to that soft curve of her neck. The shape of her body was still the same, although she had filled out in places in the sexiest way possible. She’d had the body of a girl before. Now she was all woman.
“What?” she asked.
“You look . . .” I paused. Beautiful, perfect, amazing. I could travel the entire world twice looking for the most beautiful woman and it would be a total waste of time because she was standing right in front of me . . . “Different.” I could have kicked myself at that, because her face scrunched up in clear confusion. Of all the things I could have said, that had not even been on the long list.
“That was a compliment, by the way, just in case you thought it wasn’t,” I quickly qualified.
“You look different too,” she said. But hers did not sound like a compliment. She looked around at all the decorations. I could see she was frantically weighing something up in her mind. She was frantically fanning herself with her hand too. The weighing came to an end and she delivered her verdict. “I think I’ll ask them to bring my dinner to my room. This is way too weirdly romantic and I have officially given up on romance, so this would be like a romance relapse.” She began turning.
“What do you mean a romance relapse ?” I asked, but before she could answer she walked straight into the manager holding two champagne glasses.
“Oh my God, sorry, I—” She fell backwards into a seated position on the smooth boulder and then began slipping gently down it as if on a slide. I tried not to laugh as I watched her head disappear. I walked to the edge of the boulder and looked down. The man with the champagne looked panic-stricken and was busy looking for a place to put the champagne. I jumped off the boulder and walked up to her. She was still in a seated position.
“Well, that was . . .” I started, unable to conceal my smile, but stopped immediately when she shot me a look over her shoulder. “Sorry, did it hurt?”
“Not physically.” She stood up, sweeping the debris off the back of her shorts. I wish she hadn’t done that, because now my eyes were fixated on a part of her that they really should not have been.
“I am so sorry about that,” the manager said, running back over.
“Not a problem—that was me. I seem to be falling a lot lately.” She looked over at me and I tried to quickly avert my gaze from her ass.
“Hey!” she scolded, clicking her fingers at me. “I know that look. Stop it, immediately. And now I’ll definitely be taking my dinner in my room, thanks,” she said.
“Are you not feeling well?” the manager asked.
“I’m fine, thank you,” she said.
“Do you not like it out here? We could move it all inside if you like, or onto the balcony?”
I watched her tense shoulders slump and she shook her head. Ash was the kind of person who would never hurt someone’s feelings. She was the kind of person who went out of her way to make sure everyone around her was okay, and she had this way of making everyone around her feel good. She would give someone the shirt off her back.
“No, please don’t move anything. It’s absolutely gorgeous. You guys have done a great job.” She dazzled the man with a smile. She had the greatest smile. A smile you could disappear into for days. It had always been her best feature. I hadn’t seen that smile in thirteen years, and I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it. But it wasn’t for me this time.
The man smiled back at her and then went to fetch the champagne glasses he’d balanced on a tree stump.
Ash looked down at the champagne with suspicion, and then looked back at me. I knew what she was thinking—the champagne had been part of the problem last time.
“Maybe we could ask for wine?” I said, a small smile playing at the corner of my mouth.
“Stop joking about it.” When she took the glasses from the manager, he excused himself, and I became acutely aware that the two of us were alone again. Ash took a sip of champagne and then turned round and glared at me.
“You were looking at my ass,” she said after swallowing.
“Only to make sure it was okay,” I replied quickly.
She looked at me oddly and ran her free hand through her hair again.
“It looks good,” I added, and her eyes widened in shock. “Your hair! Your hair I mean, not your ass, which, uh also . . .” I closed my mouth before I finished that sentence. “It always knotted when it was long. I used to have to brush it for you.”
“Did you? I don’t remember that.” She took another sip of her champagne and looked away from me quickly. Of course she remembered. She pressed the cool glass of champagne to her neck, then held it against her forehead.
“You know what . . .” I jumped into action. “I’m going to blow these candles out. And we don’t need these petals either.” I picked up the petal heart off the picnic rug and scattered them randomly on the rock, then I went to work on all the millions of candles. God, there were a lot, and halfway through I was starting to regret my decision, but I carried on until the giant heart-shaped ring of candle lights was gone. I finally stood up and looked at her. “I’m not going to take the fairy lights down if you don’t mind, thorns and all, but there,” I gestured to the rock, “it’s less romantic now.”
She eyed me incredulously.
“Look, you need food. I need food. There’s food here. Not to mention an ice bucket full of cool, cool, frozen cubes of water.”
She hesitated, her expression visibly scrunching into a very familiar look. I’d forgotten how expressive her face was. She always had these large and visceral reactions to things and was never able to hide what she was feeling and thinking . . . which had made that night thirteen years ago so, so, so much worse. I’d known exactly what she’d been thinking.
“There’s a French Camembert in the basket too.” I pointed at the picnic basket. Her hesitation looked as if it might waver, and I had yet another trick up my sleeve.
“It’s from Normandy.” She tried to hide the little light that had switched on in those huge eyes of hers, but I could see it.
“Camembert de Normandie?” she asked.
“Yup. Real Norman cows.”
“When did you become such a cheese connoisseur?” she asked.
“I could ask you the same question,” I replied.
“You tell me first.” She took another sip of her champagne and her eyes met mine. A flipping sensation took place in my chest. I’d forgotten how I used to feel when she looked at me. I ran my hand through my hair quickly, nervously.
Not entirely true.
I hadn’t really forgotten; I’d just tried really hard to forget.
“In Italy. My love of cheese. That’s where it first started,” I said quickly, trying to forget again.
“So you were in Italy, then?” Her tone was icy.
“And Germany, Holland and then Greece obviously.”
“Sounds like you had quite a lot of fun.” Her sharp words came at me like daggers.
“Not really,” I said empathically, and we looked at each other for a while again. There was so much between us. Thirteen years of unspoken words piled between us like Everest. But tonight did not feel like the right time to try to summit that beast of a mountain. I could see she was tired—I was tired—and we both needed to eat.
“I’m starting to feel like I could eat my own arm,” I said, trying to lighten the mood and steer the conversation back towards the more mundane.
She accepted the offering and nodded. “Me too.”
“Let’s just sit and eat,” I appealed to her, and moved towards the picnic blanket. She let out a loud, resigned sigh. “Forget the fairy lights and the . . .” I craned to listen. “Are they playing Marvin Gaye?”
She nodded. “ ‘Let’s Get It On,’ to be exact.”
“They really are pushing the romance,” I said, amused because that was probably the last song I would play if I was trying to conjure up romance.
“Fine, I’ll sit, and I’ll eat, but don’t think this means I’m not still angry you concealed your identity from me. And for the record, just because there are candles and petals and Marvin Gaye, there is nothing, and I mean nothing , romantic about this. At all! Ever.”
“I wouldn’t dream of assuming that,” I said with a smile, and then gestured for her to join me.